April 9, 1997: Park DuValle revitalization wins big grant

$9.6 million will help fund 300 new homes

Aug. 13, 2009

Written by

Karen Merk

The Courier-Journal

Louisville's effort to rebuild the Park DuValle neighborhood got a boost yesterday with the announcement that the federal government will provide $9.6 million in grants and loan guarantees - money that will allow 300 new single-family homes to be sold at affordable prices.

Louisville was one of six cities to receive a share of $90.8 million in "Homeownership Zone" funding announced yesterday by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Local officials had hoped to get the money as part of the $130 million Park DuValle revitalization. "It's the missing piece that we had hoped would be there, and it has now come through," said Andrea Duncan, executive director of the Housing Authority of Louisville.

The Homeownership Zone program is part of President Clinton's effort to undo decades of damage from warehousing the poor in barracks-like housing projects like Louisville's Cotter Homes and Lang Homes. Those complexes are being torn down to make way for the planned, mixed-income neighborhood in Park DuValle.

The money will make it easier for the city to entice homeowners to move to Park DuValle, a low-income neighborhood that has been wracked by crime.

Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson said the plan is to use the money for construction, land acquisition, financing and mortgage deals to make the houses more affordable. A house worth $100,000 might go for $60,000, for example.

A city marketing study showed that people "were very much interested in moving into this neighborhood, if we did the infrastructure - and if we gave them incentives to get more bang for their dollar than anywhere else in the community," Abramson said.

"It gives us the jump-start to show that the homes will sell, that people will stabilize the single-family market there, and then to attract even more single-family homes," he said.

Louisville has been among both the leaders and main beneficiaries of the federal effort, which has consisted of three major grant programs - Empowerment Zones/Enterprise Communities; HOPE VI; and now Homeownership Zone.

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Seed money for the Park DuValle effort and other inner-city redevelopment projects came in the form of $3 million awarded when Louisville was named an Enterprise Community in 1993. The city missed receiving up to $100 million as an Empowerment Zone, but Abramson and his top aides - along with the 100-member community board that was set up to try to win the big grant and continues to oversee initiatives - decided to try to complete the plans anyway.

The federal funding is not only a result of that effort, but also a testament to the city's success with it, Cuomo said.

PLANS for the $130 million Park DuValle revitalization had already included about 450 single-family, owner-occupied homes. Previously, 150 of them - designated for lower-income people - were funded for the project's first phase through a HOPE VI federal grant to the housing authority.

Exact locations for all 450 homes haven't been decided, Duncan said, but some will be built along Algonquin Parkway on land currently occupied by a couple of dozen mostly vacant, run-down brick four- and six-plexes at the corner of 34th Street and Algonquin, collectively known as Peyton Place.

The 300 homes will be part of the second phase of the revitalization that's in the planning stage; the first phase, 100 units of public housing, is under construction now.

OTHER CITIES receiving grant-and-loan packages were Buffalo, N.Y.; Sacramento, Calif.; Cleveland; Baltimore; and Philadelphia. There were 109 local governments that applied, Cuomo said.

Suzy Post, executive director of the non-profit Metropolitan Housing Coalition, said the city deserves congratulations for getting the money. But she criticized the federal government "for putting so much emphasis on home ownership when it's really cutting back Section 8 vouchers," a subsidy that helps people pay for rental housing.

She said the number of Section 8 vouchers for Louisville and Jefferson County this year remained the same even while the number of people who qualify for such assistance is increasing, and the waits were already months long.

"We've tipped so far in the balance" toward home ownership "that we've overlooked a pretty sizable portion of the population that can't afford home ownership," she said.